


Death and Dreams

by Descheneaux



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Death, Dreams, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-30 05:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21423007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Descheneaux/pseuds/Descheneaux
Summary: He heard a voice, soft but weighed low with fire smoke: “Tamquam-”Ronan spun and stared.There was Adam, sitting among the growth, vines climbing his skin and twining around his wrists and ankles. The scene reminded Ronan of Aglionby’s towering brick buildings, how vines had grown to consume their walls entirely. The weeds enveloped Adam gently, and Ronan wanted to join them.“You have to finish it, Ronan.”
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 10
Kudos: 47





	Death and Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very sad story, and I don't know why I wrote it, and I'm mad at myself.

It wasn’t like Ronan to mistake the dreaming world for the waking one. When he was asleep, he heard colors more than he saw them, tasted Adam’s lips more than he felt them. But sometimes dreams were wicked or, at the very least, mistrustful. Sometimes they were both. Sometimes they were filled with images that made you think you were seeing something you weren't. Sometimes they were magicians in black hooded cloaks reaching for your pocket while you marveled at coins disappearing from their palms.

When Ronan was young - all wiry limbs and flushed cheeks and bruised knees - he found a weathered book that smelled of attics and soil. It was filled with drawings he couldn’t understand. On the first page was an image of a young girl bent in prayer, her hands a small temple against her chest. But if he looked at it too long - if he tilted his head to the left and squinted his eyes - he’d see a face. Furrowed brows, wide eyes, lips curled in fury. This book was a dreamthing, he was sure, an artifact from his father’s sleeping world. But then Declan had come up behind him - “It’s called an optical illusion.” He’d said, his voice bland and disinterested, “It makes you see two things at once.” 

That’s what this dream was: something wakeful but comatose, a world equal parts feverish and vigilant. He was standing at the edge of a field filled with flowers only just beginning to bloom. The yellow of their petals was soft and faded, the kind of color that crawls inside you and makes your chest feel heavy. A dark sky with no stars hovered heavy in the distance, but the field didn’t need light to be seen. It was stark and alive against the dark, vines and weeds tangling with one another like familiar lovers. 

So the dreaming world, then.

But the night was more absolute than it usually was when Ronan was asleep. Usually, when he dreamed of night, the darkness seemed more like consequence of the day than a replacement for it. The sky would be inky black but with plump storm clouds, star filled but moonless.

So he was awake, then. After all, there were no crabs with barcodes on their stomachs and murder on their minds. There were no bright red cars with black raven wings erupting from their windows. There was only this: Ronan, a field left to wild, a draping silence. 

But then he heard a voice, bright but weighed low with fire smoke: “Tamquam-” 

Ronan spun and stared. 

There was Adam, sitting among the growth, vines climbing his skin and twining around his wrists and ankles. The scene reminded Ronan of Aglionby’s towering brick buildings, how vines had grown to consume their walls entirely. The weeds enveloped Adam gently, and Ronan wanted to join them. 

He watched Adam’s lips curl cautiously into a half smile. 

“You have to finish it, Ronan.” 

Adam was there. He was close enough to touch, his legs folded beneath him. A man in a child’s pose, with fingers as long and thin as river reeds resting in his lap. And because he was there, Ronan was dreaming, and this realization was fingers around Ronan’s neck. It was a pain that was premeditated and resinous. 

“Stop feeling bad for yourself,” Adam spoke again, and each word sounded like Ronan’s prayers answered. “Finish this.” 

“Alter Idem.” Ronan said, but only because he had to. Only because Adam wasn’t someone he could deny. 

Adam dragged his fingertips along his cheek and stared, pensive, at the vines that encircled his wrists. Ronan saw, then, that Adam had not been captured by the foliage. He was willing, gathering leaves and weeds until his pale skin became the exception and budding green the rule. “You remember last fall? When I thought Gansey had paid my rent?” He asked. 

Ronan was surprised to feel a laugh building in his chest, “You should have let him, Adam. Gansey’s rich enough that he wouldn’t notice the loss. Hell, he’s rich enough that he could buy his own Welsh town and declare himself the king. That would have simplified things.”

Adam laughed, lines like bird wings budding out from the corner of his eyes. It was such an Adam thing to do that Ronan’s insides ached. “But it was you,” Adam said softly. Or the wind had said it. Maybe both. In Ronan’s dreams, the two could be the same: Adam’s voice and the wind, the wind and Adam’s voice. 

“It wasn’t a handout, Adam.” Ronan’s eyebrows creased in thought. “It’s like - It’s not a selfless act for your lungs to take in air. It’s not valliant for your kidneys to clean your blood. It’s selfish, really.  
They need you to survive.”

Adam reached for Ronan, and Ronan’s knees met the grass, meeting him halfway. He felt Adam’s fingers on his jaw, tasted them as maple syrup and smoke, heard them as a violin’s song, soft but resonant. This was the way of dreams. It was also the way of nightmares. 

Adam’s eyes were blue as nostalgia, his lips arched and full. His hair had grown long in death, falling in waves that pooled at his collarbones. His body was a marvel of soft lines and sudden corners. 

Ronan tried to focus. Think of him alive. 

But a Ronan that was like him but trembling and wailing materialized behind them. An Adam that was like this Adam, but wide-eyed and unseeing, lay limp across his arms. 

When Ronan was young, he was prone to fits and tantrums. His mother would drag her fingers softly up and down his arm so that he could barely feel them. She’d tell him stories about princesses that had more than pretty faces and knights in need of saving. Ronan called this feathering, when she calmed him this way. Sometimes Ronan would throw a tantrum only because he wanted her to. Declan would always say, “He’s losing his mind,” his face sour. 

But Adam - when he’d died in Ronan’s arms - had weighted those words irreversibly. He was away from his mind, a body that looked like Adam but was an empty illusion. Ronan had whipped out his pocket knife, releasing the sharp-edged wings that crouched in waiting. They’d sliced a line across Adam’s forearm, but the blood had welled lazily. Adam did not shudder. He did not breathe. 

This Adam, this dreamthing, looked behind him and watched the nightmare play out, quiet and unaffected. 

When he turned back to Ronan he was wearing a smile that undid him. Ronan put Adam’s lips to his mouth. A question. Adam touched his lips to Ronan’s jaw. An answer. Their mouths were quick to meet. Their arms tangled and unwound and tangled again. They kissed until Ronan’s bottom lip swelled. 

Adam pulled away. A “keraaaah” rang out, but its source was nowhere to be seen. The waking  
world was forcing its way in. Ronan whimpered: a plea.

“I’m not your lungs,” Adam laughed, “Okay, maybe you’re right about the liver part. Useful, but not a necessity.” 

Ronan enfolded Adam in his arms. The vines snaking around Adam’s wrists reached for his own. He clung to him, his hand cradling Adam’s neck like it was china already cracked and compromised. “I could take you with me,” Ronan whispered in his ear.

“But it wouldn’t be me. It would be you, wearing my skin.” 

“I wouldn’t let it be.” 

“You can’t take me with you.” 

“I can.”

“Let me go, and open your eyes.” 

“No.” 

“Let me go, and open your eyes.” 

“No.”

He released Adam, and opened his eyes.


End file.
